This lovely object is more than just an interesting gewgaw: It’s called a “turner’s cube”—so named, I think, because it is a challenge for one who turns on a lathe rather than eponymously—and according to Bob Warfield, “[i]n the old days, novice machinist’s [sic] were handed one and told to work out how to make one of their own.” Bob’s got a cool page describing his efforts to make one manually and then using a CNC mill, with some bonus commentary on this thread by CNC Zone member widgitmaster, who made the cube pictured above, using the jig pictured above, on a big engine lathe. Beautiful!

I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. My work has also appeared in ReadyMade, c’t – Magazin für Computertechnik, and The Wall Street Journal.